ETSI hackathons leverage MEC for car infotainment apps

ETSI hackathons MEC
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ETSI’s industry specification group on multi-access edge computing (MEC) has declared its first MEC Hackathons series a success after developers gathered in Europe and China to test their applications with ETSI MEC APIs in a variety of use cases.

The events took place simultaneously on September 18-19 in Beijing, Berlin and Turin.

With the automotive sector being one of the hottest areas for edge computing and 5G, the main focus of the hackathon was in-vehicle infotainment. Teams were asked to develop entertainment and/or VR/AR applications as in-car mobile solutions for passengers, using ETSI MEC technologies. Other applications that can benefit from the reduced latency and enhanced performance of MEC were also allowed.

The teams were required to onboard their applications in real-life MEC systems and connect with the MEC APIs to receive simulated in-network data. Huawei, Intel and Saguna provided the MEC platforms. Huawei and Intel also supplied server hardware.

The Beijing hackathon was hosted by China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and Huawei, and organized by CCSA, Huawei, Intel and SDN/NFV Industry Alliance. ETSI provided support.

Following a full day of hacking, pitches, demonstrations and technical Q&A sessions, four of the participating teams were recognized with awards:

  • China Mobile Research Institute and Neusoft received the Application Innovation Award for “Low-latency intelligent image identification based on edge computing”.
  • China Unicom and Shenzhen Santu Tech’s “MEC edge cloud 3D holographic E2E service solution” was named Best Application Prospect.
  • The “Smart eye” solution by CTBRI received Best Technology Innovation Award
  • The Best Technical Contribution Award went to “Cloud goods identification of MEC-based computing prioritized network” developed by China Mobile Research Institute and Huawei 2012 Laboratories.

In addition, five other teams were rewarded with excellence awards.

The Berlin hackathon was organized by ETSI and supported by Huawei, Intel, ISMB, I3P, Saguna, Viavi and Vodafone. The eventual winner, Edgegap, proposed a solution for real-time optimization of multi-player games. This was installed on two MEC platforms – Saguna, based on virtual machines, and Huawei, based on containers – demonstrating the portability of MEC apps.

The winner of the Turin hackathon, Jarvis, put forward a solution that exploited MEC’s performance capabilities within vehicles’ collision avoidance systems. Their prize was inclusion in the city of Turin’s Smart Road project, providing the possibility of implementing and testing the application within a live 5G automotive infrastructure trial in the urban environment of Turin. The second placed team, Drivenet, will receive free mentoring and consultancy on their project from I3P, the start-up incubator of the Polytechnic University of Turin, which also hosted the hackathon.

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